What To Do Tonight? How About the Wild Boar Festival?

So on Saturday, May 12 I took the 10:10 bus from Siena bound for Florence. The bus was FULL - literally not one seat to be had. I had been sitting at a window seat and a woman got on the bus at an outer Florence stop and sat next to me. Within 5 minutes, she asked me if I would be more comfortable sitting in the aisle seat. I said “si”, and we switched places. Very nice I thought, and a rare gesture here in the U.S. (or at least here in the “elbow in the ribs” northeast).

As I rolled into Galluzzo - the last town before one crosses into Florence proper coming from the south - a waterfall of feelings cascaded over me: excitement, melancholy, relief, wonder…After having been on the week-long tour that I was on, and as much fun as it was, it was totally programmed, and in the end it was WORK (relief). The excitement was born out of seeing this beautiful city once again, and that in turn made me feel glad about not being jaded. And as you may or may not remember, I lived in Florence in 1989 and 1990, so a touch of melancholy beset me thinking back to those freewheeling times, and all the water that’s passed under my bridge since then…and the wonder of where my friends lives had taken them since we last met also made a few laps in my brain…

I arrived at noon at Santa Maria Novella Station. My friend Piero was to meet me, but there was no sign of him at the bus terminal, and after walking and scanning for a few minutes, I still didn’t see him. I had his home and cell numbers, so I thought I’d give him a ring to find out just where he was. The umpteen phones that surround the station, now that I’ve had a few encouters with them, I now known not be phones, but phone-LIKE incarnations of slot machines. I read the directions in two languages five separate times, and still managed to lose almost four Euros without ever connecting to the numbers desired. If anyone can explain how these phones actually work (or if they actually do work at all), please post the directions here.

As these things tend to be, I ran into Piero just be accident. Big embrace, double cheek kiss, and we were off, I dragging my wheeled suitcase behind. We probably could have taken the bus, but I was keen to see a bit of the city - the old well-worn paths - on the way back to his place. It was quite warm, and the hazy sunshine clogged my head a bit…

I dumped my suitcase on his terrazzo floor, met his girlfriend Elena, and hit the showers. Italian showers…a question for all of you…Is the Italian shower curtain sector that much less developed than our own? The actual plumbing is usually equal or even superior to those here in the U.S., but for whatever reason, the idea of spraying the entire bathroom with splashes and suds seems not to phase Italians one bit - this is just something that I’ve never quite understood - what’s the aversion to shower curtains? Mentioning the shower afforded me the opportunity to ask this mysterious little question, but to be fair, Piero’s shower does have a shower curtain, but rather two sliding doors that meet at the corner. No, the spalshing is not the problem here…here the problem is SIZE. This shower stall is LITERALLY one meter square…there’s barely enough room to turn around, and if one were a body builder or especially tubby, one literally could not get into this shower…but I digress…

I was hungry (I’m often hungry). I told Piero that as much as LOVE Italian food, after a week solid of lavish Italian meals, I wanted something other-than-Italian. So we went out for Gyros at a new little Greek joint that opened up just around the corner. And as is the way with so many Italian lunch conversations, as we ate, we discussed where we would go for dinner that evening. After some back and forth, we decided on the Sagra del Cinghiale (The Wild Boar Festival).

Dinner hour arrived and we piled into Piero’s brand new FIAT, and pointed the car south. For those of you unfamiliar with Italian navigational habits, ALL Italians think that they know where EVERYTHING is, whether they’ve been there a thousand times or never before. No major departure in this case. We drove the dark, narrow streets outside of Florence, already quite rural in character, and continued further in to the country. We drove by where Piero thought the place should be, but nothing…We asked an older gentleman. He pointed us that way…We drove THAT way, and didn’t feel confident in the guidance, so we spotted a cluster of teenage boys on scooters, and they guided us further on…We forged ahead, and just over a certain little hillock, we found it - The Sagra del Cinghiale!

For those of you from the “old east” in the U.S., this was what we would call a “feast” - the events that so many Italian, Portuguese, etc. parishes and/or social clubs hold to raise money (minus the 50/50 chances, the clattering betting wheels, and the bean bag tosses), though Piero speculated that the most likely beneficiary of this event was the local “Casa del Popolo” (House of the People) considering that this area of Italy is better than 90% Communist - or should I write “Communist”?

The place where we ate was an enclosed tent set with folding tables. The place was packed: long tables of families and friends all around us, and just to my left there was a table of clearly Italian guys, and clearly American girls. The Italian boys were trying to work some flirtatious magic through via some pretty poor English, a sack-full of animated gestures, and some singing as well. It’s good to see that some things about Italy NEVER change…

Our waiter was a 10 year old boy that was closely followed by a cute four year old boy who imitated his every move, and between little jumps and spins, wanted to serve the diners. He was denied, and after a bit of this, a late-teen girl picked him up, gave him a big kiss, and pushed him throught the hole from which the orders arrived, presumably in to arms of his dad…We ordered and were served an antipasto di cinghiale (mixed salami, coppe, etc. made from wild boar), two orders of tortellini al sugo di cinghiale (with wild boar sauce), an order of penne al sugo di cinghiale, two orders of grilled wild boar ribs, wild boar sausages, a side of fagioli all’uccelletto (white beans cooked in the style that one cooks small game birds - look it up…), half a liter of red wine, and a liter of water. Beleive it or not, we ate EVERYTHING, but before we did, we somewhat vicariously enjoyed the warm community that these folks had. They laughed while they worked together and seemingly with great pride too: men, women, and children of all ages enjoying each other’s company while working hard toward a common good. For so many of us, a colder, compartmentalized life is much more the norm, and it restored in me a certain faith that people really living TOGETHER in a real COMMUNITY is neither dead nor contrived…

We somehow managed to lift ourselves from the table, and stepped back outside into what had become a chilly, breezy night. We made our way home a bit more efficiently than we had arrived, found an ACES parking spot, and strolled a bit through Piazza Santa Croce, ultimately rejecting a gelato for a little shut-eye…

TOM CIOCCO